HBO Just Quietly Removed All of Its Adult Content. R.I.P. ‘Real Sex.’

Show of hands: How many of you learned about female orgasms by watching that Real Sex episode with the vagina pillows? Remember when HBO’s docu-series took you inside a real-life swinger party? Or how about the time it introduced audiences to “puppetry of the penis”? Unforgettable. Iconic, even. Unfortunately, future generations will never know the joy of Real Sex because HBO just unceremoniously removed all of the adult-themed content from its library.

And yes, that includes fellow steamy docu-series like Taxicab Confessions and Cathouse (set inside a real-life Nevada brothel), as well as its surprisingly educational specials hosted by adult film star Katie Morgan, and the various softcore movies that were still somehow available to view (and as corny as ever) with an HBO subscription — basically, all the stuff you snuck down to the living room to watch on the only TV with a cable box after your parents went to sleep.

If you were fortunate to grow up in a household with HBO, then you know the value of Real Sex, which offered much more legit sex-ed than those horribly awkward videos you had to watch in school, or the classes barely taught by a phys. ed instructor during their free period. No shade to Coach Jenkins, but she already had the odds stacked against her teaching a sex-ed class in Texas.

As to why HBO chose to quietly remove all of its adult entertainment classics, a representative told The Wrap that the network remains committed to developing original programming, but “there hasn’t been a strong demand for this kind of adult programming, perhaps because it’s easily available elsewhere” — and by that they mean the internet, where sites like PornHub have made it easy (and free) to watch pornographic content at any hour of the day. (PornHub also makes it easy for people to watch bootlegs of Hamilton and award-winning films like The Big Sick. Yes, really.)

I can believe that subscribers weren’t watching Real Sex anymore — I mean, maybe they just didn’t know they still had the option. I can also believe that the internet killed Real Sex because the internet ruins everything that is pure and good. What I cannot believe is that HBO just removed its iconic corpse without giving it a proper funeral or anything. How dare they.